NASA awarded SNC full value of $20 million for the passage of CCiCap Milestone 8, Wind Tunnel Testing. To date, SNC has received over 80 percent of the total award value under the CCiCap agreement and is on track to complete the program later this year.

The purpose of Milestone 8 was to continue to advance the overall design of the Dream Chaser orbital spacecraft. This next step analyzed the forces and flight dynamic characteristics that the vehicle will experience during orbital ascent and re-entry. The completion of this milestone significantly advances the path to orbital flight of the Dream Chaser spacecraft and the Dream Chaser Atlas V integrated launch system.

Several Dream Chaser scale model spacecraft were subjected to multiple different wind tunnel tests in various configurations, including the integrated Dream Chaser attached to the United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle. In addition to the baseline milestone criteria, SNC fully self-funded an additional wind tunnel test that will accelerate the Dream Chaser development schedule.

“Our program continues to fully complete each of our CCiCap agreement milestones assisted through our strong collaboration efforts with our integrated ‘Dream Team’ of industry, university and government strategic partners. We are on schedule to launch our first orbital flight in November of 2016, which will mark the beginning of the restoration of U.S. crew capability to low-Earth orbit,” said Mark N. Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of SNC’s Space Systems.

The wind tunnel tests for this milestone were completed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, CALSPAN Transonic Wind Tunnel in New York, and at NASA’s Langley Research Center Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel in Hampton, Virginia.

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